| What we now call "Opt In"
Mailing Lists are a great way to engage your site visitors and get over
your sales and marketing message.
So what is a mailing list? It's
simply a list that people join to receive information through their
email. Once you start up a list you can put a button or text link on
your web site to encourage people to sign up. Should you decide to
do a monthly newsletter then all you do is compose this each month then
once ready for publication you simply email the newsletter to the
list. That's one email you send! When the mailing list
software receives your email it will then send it out to every person
that has registered on your list. So.. it could go out to
thousands of people and you haven't needed to do any extra work other
than compose it and send it to your list.
Clearly there are certain things you need
to be aware of when creating lists and the most important one is to tell
people how to be removed from it. This is simply good manners and your
mailing list software automates this process when a request is sent to
it for removal.. so again this is automatic meaning you don't need to do
any extra work.
The popularity of your mailing list will
of course depend on it's content and the principal of giving a little
still stands in this medium. If all you are doing with it is
simply listing special offers then you might get a poorer response that
if you also included some interesting technical information or other
stories along with it.
You might even consider using more than
one mailing list and make them very specific so if visitors just want a
list of special offers they can join the special offer mailing
list. Should they want to receive background information as well
as special offers they might join your Newsletter mailing list.
It's also a good idea to offer a sample mailing for people to see so
that they can judge the relevance to them of your various lists.
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